Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press 2012 - Red Circle of ...

Apr 12 #5 Debbie Clark has reported Peter Tonkin's THE HOUND OF THE BOR-
DERS (2003), which has Elizabethan sleuth Tom Musgrave on the
Scottish borders in pursuit of the Barquest (a mythical hound of terrifying
proportions); it's the third of four books in the his "Master of Defense"
series, which has been described as "James Bond meets Sherlock Holmes meets
William Shakespeare."
Plan well ahead: the Segal Centre for Performing Arts in Montreal will pre-
sent a new Sherlockian play written by Greg Kramer and starring Jay Baru-
chel as as Holmes, May 5-26, 2013 .
The Société Sherlock Holmes de France has reported on "L'extravagant mys-
tère Holmes", a play written by Christian Chevalier and Christophe Guillon
that premiered in 2010 and is still being performed by the Compagnie Kela-
notre; their web-site at has artwork, photographs, and
a three-minute video.
Universal Pictures was founded on Apr. 30, 1912, and is now the oldest op-
erating film producer and distributor in the United States. The UCLA Film
& Television Archive is celebrating Universal's centenary with a seven-week
film festival, showing films that range from "Traffic in Souls" (1913) to
"Inglourious Basterds" (2009); details at . Alas:
none of Basil Rathbone's "Sherlock Holmes" films made the list.
A new Russian television series "Sherlock Holmes" has been in the works for
some time, from Central Partnership, which was described as Russia's larg-
est independent film producer and distributor (Jun 08 #6); there were many
delays, but Alexander Orlov has reported that the production of the series
is now underway, starring Igor Patrenko (Sherlock Holmes) and Andrey Panin
(Dr. Watson) in eight two-part stories. Additional information is avail-
able at (the Russian version of Wikipedia); Goo-
gle Translate is a useful (and free) program that helps you read all sorts
of languages on-line.
The Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research surely is one of the
more unusual places to find "The Valley of Fear" cited. Karen Murdock dis-
covered "Sherlock Holmes and the Strange Case of the Missing Attribution"
(by Jamie Reilly and Jamie Fisher) in the Feb. 2012 issue: the authors note
echoes of the story in "The Grandfather Passage", which is used by aphasio-
logists and others to elicit speech and reading errors. Copies are avail-
able from Prof. Reilly .
"You've Got Mail" is a weekly feature on the Houghton Library blog, and you
can read Peter Accardo's report on an interesting letter from Christopher
Morley to Edgar W. Smith at . The letter is part
of the Baker Street Irregulars Archive at the Houghton.
The next "Sherlock Holmes Weekend" in Cape May, N.J., will be on Nov. 2-4,
with participants at work solving the mystery "Sherlock Holmes and the Tri-
al of Moriarty's Challenge"; there also will be a performance of "Sherlock
Holmes and the Adventure of the Norwood Builder" by the East Lynne Theater
Company. Visit for
more information on the weekend, or write to Box 340, Cape May, N.J. 08204.